The
White House
‘s new
emissions
disclosure requirements for federal contractors are the latest instance of President Joe Biden’s administration wielding the United States government’s massive purchasing power to make the economy greener.
Biden last year established the first-ever emissions reduction targets for the U.S. economy, envisioning at least a halving of emissions by 2030, compared to 2005 levels. The administration has proposed a host of new regulations on industry designed to serve that end, from the Energy Department’s energy efficiency rules for household appliances to the Environmental Protection Agency’s
methane mitigation rule
.
But it’s also using the government’s leverage as a buyer of hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods and services annually as a greening instrument. It’s offering both “carrots” and “sticks” to the private sector by pledging to preference lower-emitting goods and proposing new mandates for suppliers.
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“As the world’s largest customer, with more than $650 billion in spending last year, the United States government is putting our money where our mouth is to strengthen accountability for climate risk and resilience,” Biden said during remarks at the COP27 United Nations climate change summit on Nov. 11.
The initiative to use public money to create more of a “demand signal” for green technologies picked up steam at last year’s climate summit, where Biden announced the creation of a “First Movers Coalition” made up of the U.S. and other governments and companies teaming up to purchase more lower-carbon goods.
The coalition has since committed to spending $12 billion on products such as lower-carbon cement and concrete.
Biden laid the groundwork for all this out of the gate with the climate change executive order he issued during his first week in office, which set out a “whole-of-government approach to combating the climate crisis” rather than one defined by the regulatory work of a handful of federal agencies.
The executive order directed government agencies to look inward and assess how climate change affects their operations, as well as to find new opportunities “to spur innovation, commercialization, and deployment of clean energy technologies and infrastructure.”
The White House later
established
government-specific emissions targets, such as acquiring a 100% zero-emission federal vehicle fleet by 2035.
Agencies are moving the needle and acquired five times as many electric vehicles in fiscal 2022 compared to the year before, according to the White House.
Since Biden’s executive order, military branches have put forward their own climate change strategies laying out green technology goals, the latest of which the Air Force published last month.
The force’s plan aims for 100% carbon pollution-free electricity on a net annual basis by fiscal 2030 and 100% zero-emission, nontactical vehicles by 2035.
“We will continue to research opportunities for exploring alternative energy sources for both installations and weapon systems to diversify our energy options while sending a ‘demand signal’ to industry, which will need to supply those options for our use,” the plan says.
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The administration is also looking to its regulatory authority and proposing changes to rules governing its suppliers, as seen with its proposed contractor emissions rule, to make them align more closely with Biden’s climate agenda.
The contractor rule, crafted by the Office of the Federal Chief Sustainability Officer,
would require public disclosure of emissions
, as well as climate-related financial risks and the setting of emissions reduction targets from major contractors. Biden touted the rule at the COP27 conference as a first among governments.
Other mandates include a proposed rule from the General Services Administration, dubbed “America’s buyer,” which would limit the federal government’s purchase of single-use plastic products.
